Flubit to transform into a full marketplace today!

Flubit are to launch a fully fledged UK marketplace today. Sellers have long been wishing for a marketplace to compete with the two biggest UK players, and Flubit, having already built traction with both buyer and sellers, today launch a full marketplace with funding in place to be a realistic contender.

Following their latest investment with a funding commitment topping £16m, Flubit are set to unveil their newest proposition; an online search and browse marketplace consisting of a 60 million strong product database, populated exclusively by over 1,500 trusted and verified UK and Irish online sellers.

It’s worth emphasising that Flubit aren’t launching from scratch with no sellers and no buyers. They’re already a five year old established business who have been winning sales for sellers and have a regular pool of repeat buyers. What Flubit are doing is transforming their existing business into a full marketplace proposition and nearly all major channel software partners (including ChannelAdvisor, Linnworks, StoreFeeder, SellerExpress, and Magento) already have integrations feeding products directly into the Flubit marketplace.

“We have been on a five year journey with many of our thousands of registered online sellers, delivering them growing revenue year on year; now their belief in us has allowed us to repay them with this news, the ability to significantly build on our proposition and make it easier for UK customers to buy their inventory. UK online sellers have long wanted great marketplace competition, we are the UK owned alternative to Amazon, offering customers great prices and speedy delivery – without harming the bottom line of our independent online sellers that sell products everyday through our platform. We will be using our financial backing as an opportunity to invest heavily in marketing activity behind the positioning of the site, helping Flubit.com to reaffirm its status as the largest UK owned marketplace and become a household name for online shopping.”
– Bertie Stephens, Flubit Co-Founder and CEO

Launched in 2011, Flubit.com have to-date saved their customers in excess of £2million on over 88,000 big name brands. Previously operating as a private-offer service, the website has today been re-launched as a fully-fledged marketplace, allowing customers to instantly search for the items they’re looking to buy, at prices they would be hard pressed to find anywhere else on the internet. True to Flubit’s origins, you can still search products by entering the Amazon URL, to list (and buy) the products you want.

Not only is Flubit.com making a serious play to compete with other UK marketplaces, it has also recently made big waves in the B2B market with the launch of SKUcloud.co.uk allowing online sellers to sell their products on Flubit.com and their partner sites including; Mighty deals, On The Dot, Mirror Tech and Games.

At launch around 20% of Flubit’s entire online seller catalogue will be available to buy, with the rest of the catalogue being added over the coming eight weeks.

If you would like to be part of the new Flubit marketplace, you can sign up to sell at skucloud.co.uk. If you want to buy, just go to flubit.com and wait for the new marketplace to be revealed later today.

If you are attending the InternetRetailing Expo this week (5th and 6th April), drop past the Flubit stand to find out more.

Tina B

2 years ago

This works for us I think. We’ve been a seller with Flubit (now SKU cloud?) for last 2.5 years and they’re our 3rd biggest channel after Amazon and eBay. The biggest issue we’ve had is that about 40% of our inventory isn’t branded and therefore we struggle to get any traction on these SKUs. This looks like it should help us. Let’s wait and see but the backing sounds encouraging if they’ll use it on marketing – any split away from Amazon helps us.

Jane

2 years ago

Do you not feel that Flubit is a complete waste of time? People only visit Flubit to get the cheapest price. You’re not allowed to followup with them yourself afterwards either.

You’re getting one-off customers that are only concerned about pricing.

Sounds like Flubit is taking a different approach. Go with it. Don’t go with it. But don’t confuse the future with the past.

dw

northumbrian

2 years ago

“Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.”
Winston Churchill

Gubbins

2 years ago

George Santayana, actually…

northumbrian

2 years ago

so what! its the same message

Shaun

2 years ago

“We have been on a five year journey with many of our thousands of registered online sellers, delivering them growing revenue year on year”

Guess we should probably take the plunge and integrate then! Hope it’s worth the effort.

James

2 years ago

Great to see some competition in the marketplace long over due. The UK market is unfairly controlled by Amazon and eBay. We (Seller) need an ecosystem where customers we have choice and sellers have different platforms to sell on.

Flubit needs to invest in ‘buyer marketing’ once you get buyers you will get sellers.

They should target sites like HKUD etc to gain customers for their platform.

They still have some issues on site, i.e. One of them is that they send emails asking customers to give the feedback even before the ETA. If expected delivery day is showing 5th to 8th, buyers are being asked to leave seller feedback on the 4th.

This then gives customers an impression that they should have received the orders by the 4th. After two bad feedbacks stating “no order received but we have been asked to leave feedback”, my boss pointed this out to flubit support and requested for notification or site error to be looked into, instead of a clarification he received a very rude reply from someone above the support team.

Boss then explained again and pointed out that they at flubit have misunderstood the message OR haven’t read it. But no one even bothered to apologize for the misunderstanding, rude reply or offered to have this issue looked into.

Other couple of issues but the above was a big blow to our confidence. We have now been advised that if there is one more mishandling and rude message from flubit, close the account. I hope they do well and win our confidence back but i not holding my breath. Good and polite seller support is important and goes a long way.

Alan

2 years ago

We’ve been on Flubit for a while now, made not a single sale, a few demands though.

What about all those Flubit Elite members that have paid for membership on Flubit?

Rob I-Box

2 years ago

Personally I have a lot of time for Flubit. Decent team and though my sales aren’t as high as my Amazon (and nor did they pretend they would be) – the account ticks over pretty nicely.

This looks like a good step for them so will watch with interest.

Rob

Peter King

2 years ago

Is there anyway to go back to the old flubit?

Price seem to be higher
Half the link come up as “Oops! Something went wrong, please try again.”
Doesn’t seem to tell you who you’re buying from.

Tony

2 years ago

Yes that seems to be the downside as a buyer, all my recent purhcases are now more expensive than Amazon!

As a buyer, bought two things yesterday (1 was cheaper, 1 i didn’t check but felt like an OK price). As a seller sold 5 things. Not my biggest channels, but similar to Rob above, it’s given me a steady stream of orders over past 12 months, so happy to have some variation.

Dave

2 years ago

As a long term buyer on Flubit and a Flubit ‘Elite’ member, I think this new format is shocking. The search engine is non existent. I have since cancelled my membership. From a buyers point of view, copying and pasting the URL’s from Amazon & Tesco Direct etc.. and getting a quick response, usually with a better price was ideal. This new format completely takes from that experience – none of the URL’s I typed in worked.

Bart

2 years ago

As a consumer, there’s zero point to using Flubit now. The prices are bad, and they can never compete against Amazon’s customer service should anything go wrong. RIP Flubit.

SAM

2 years ago

Well I have had Flubit account for a while, now I will admit I have never actually used it and have never totally understood it.
However we signed something up with this Skycloud. They wanted my Amazon URL for some reason which will be pretty useless it is our least active marketplace. I do not see what rates they have or anything. If it anther cheapest WIN site hmmmm.
We really need something new in the UK so am willing to try anything to be fair.

This is a great move, Flubit originally was a good platform but most buyers just want to buy the product there and then. This move has done exactly that!

For an online seller in the UK, it would be a no brainer to try this marketplace out, no commissions or seller fees and it already integrates with a tonne of multichannel systems such as Channel Advisor, Volo, Linnworks and BrightPearl.

The main key here is to provide prices lower than you would on Amazon 🙂

Andrew

2 years ago

As a frequent tryer on flubit using their search bar tool to get a better price as in reality with today’s life getting more expensive, I have just tried the new website shocked is not a word! Very expensive products from who knows where, even Amazons marketplace tells you the owner, where they are based etc so that puts me off straight away. Flubit appears to have changed format and not kept to their original plan, in my view this is like Ratuken bought Play, there was fanfare for that when it started as it used more third party sellers, became more expensive …….and where is it now?

Robert Netherway

2 years ago

What a disappointment, this is not Flubit. I tried using Amazon URLs and found a lot of them either didn’t work, the item wasn’t​ on the market place or it was much more expensive. I am an elite member and don’t see the new elite being worth bothering with if it is as bad as this.

A. Alani

2 years ago

Totally ruined Flubit. I’ve tried using it today, and it’s not the Flubit I’ve used and loved in the past. It doesn’t generate deals for you. I’ve written so many Amazon URLs and it couldn’t find them, and there isn’t any generation of demand type of thing. Not using it anymore, I’m sure Flubit has felt the decline in their customer base. I really feel sorry for the guys that paid for the elite service.

ghfghgf

2 years ago

Yep, ruined. I used the Flubit service to get better prices, pure and simple. Flubit doesn’t do that now, so what’s the point?